Do you have that sort of distance when women vent about men?
I would say yes. I have a hobby of sorts that consists of exploring obscure corners of the web where various sorts of fringe people with unconventional (and often disreputable) ideas gather, and attempting to understand their perspectives in a detached manner, as free of bias as possible. As an example relevant for your question, I have read radical feminist websites where the level of anger against men far surpasses any venting against women you’ll see on even the worst PUA forums.
Now, my conclusion is that out of all these fringe groups, most of them just form their own echo chambers where they vent and reinforce their peculiar biases, but a small minority actually manage to come up with non-trivial accurate insight that is nowhere to be found in more reputable and mainstream sources. The PUA community just happens to be one such example. In contrast, I have never come across any analogous women’s community, where lots of valid and interesting insight would be offered alongside anti-male anger and venting, but if I hypothetically did, I have no doubt I would enjoy reading it. (There are also communities full of angry venting men where, in contrast to PUAs, I’ve never seen any particularly interesting ideas.)
As for the Dark Triad guys, I agree that they should be a matter of more concern—the only specific advice I’ve seen about avoiding them is to not get involved with a man who’s rude to waitresses.
Trouble is, some very strong biases are present here, because the ugly and hard to admit truth is that some personalty types of this sort are attractive as such to many women—not all women, of course, and I won’t speculate on the percentage, but it’s certainly non-negligible. Note that I don’t mean the situations where such dark characteristics are hidden under a nice surface only to emerge later, but when they are truly attractive by themselves, causing irresistible urges in women to engage in dangerous, self-immolating adventures with such men. You can view it as a specifically female form of extreme akrasia, I guess. The prevailing bias, however, is to interpret all such situations as women having been manipulated by a wolf in sheep’s clothing, even when the wolf was howling and brandishing his fangs from day one, only to get an enthusiastic response.
In contrast, I have never come across any analogous women’s community, where lots of valid and interesting insight would be offered alongside anti-male anger and venting, but if I hypothetically did, I have no doubt I would enjoy reading it.
I would love to read material from a female analogue to PUA. Looking back on past relationships I can see some patterns for behavior that ‘hooked’ me, but I’m sure I’m missing a lot of potentially valuable insights.
People often meet a person they like but can’t commit to romantically because of small ‘defects’ in the person’s behavior as it relates to the relationship. Personally, I’d be all in favor of my significant other using PUA equivalent methods on me, provided I was aware it and had studied the material myself (in the same way that I’m in favor of my significant other wearing certain clothing, etc).
So, two main upshots of wide dissemination of PUA style material: better understanding of myself, and heightened attraction to my partner.
You’re response in the subthread was more a list of biases exhibited by females (an interesting list though). What I’m looking for is a set of actionable techniques a woman can use in the context of a relationship to keep a man more interested.
The Rules is probably the best known example. I haven’t read it and don’t know whether there is any validity to the claims. I suspect there’s some truth in there but that it is not terribly rigorous or accurate.
I haven’t read this book either, but a significant piece of evidence against it is that one of the authors divorced her husband only a few years after it was published. Otherwise, I’ve seen it get mixed to negative comments on game websites, the principal complaint being that a man who lets himself be played by those rules may easily ipso facto signal low status to the point where he’ll destroy her respect for (and thus attraction to) him. Some of the tactics allegedly advocated by the book indeed sound that way, but I won’t pass any definite judgments since I haven’t read it.
What I’m looking for is a set of actionable techniques a woman can use in the context of a relationship to keep a man more interested.
Certainly such products exist (e.g. catchhimandkeephim.com, husbandscantresist.com) but I’m not familiar with any free online resources comparable to the vast assortment available for men. Catchhimandkeephim.com has some articles, but skimming through I found it difficult to judge how useful a woman would find this advice, as it sounded all very obvious and straightforward to me… but then, I’m a man, and the articles are about how men react and think. It’s possible that the information would be a revelation for someone who wasn’t a man. ;-)
There are many books giving that sort of advice, but I haven’t read any, so I can’t recommend them. Just from the titles and blurbs I’ve seen, it can be reliably concluded that many are very bad.
Anecdotally, I can say that in the best discussions of women’s relationship strategies and techniques I’ve ever read on game-related sites, I’ve never seen anyone point out a book or any other source of systematic advice whose message closely matches the best evidence-supported conclusions of these discussions. I see this as a strong piece of evidence against the whole existing literature. This is not that surprising considering that the best evidence-supported conclusions sound, to a large degree, highly un-PC and shattering lots of pleasant-sounding illusions.
Yes, it’s harder to do experiments on parts of the interaction that occur later down the line. I think that’s a lot of the reason that PUAs talk so much more about pickup than relationships (though PUA forums typically have active relationships boards): the conversion funnel of approaches to dating to relationships gets narrower and narrower. PUAs spend most of their time stuck at particular interaction points prior to relationships, such as getting numbers and women not calling them back, going on dates with women and not being able to kiss them, or only successfully attracting women who don’t quite meet their relationship criteria. I’ve noticed that once PUAs get all that stuff handled, they start talking about relationships more than the mechanics of pickup, and actually get really picky.
What insights have you found in odd corners of the web?
As for the Dark Triad, I don’t know what’s going on there. I tentatively assume that some people like danger, and what attracts some to motorcycles and mountain-climbing can also attract people to mates who have TROUBLE written all over them.
Alternatively, some women choose men like their fathers—they’re imprinted on a bad idea of what a man is.
Also, I hope it’s less common in the culture, but some women believe that they can turn a bad guy into a good one by being a sufficiently good wife. I’m not going to say it never happens, but making the attempt can be a powerful emotional hook.
It’s clear that how reliable people’s survival instincts are (and about what parts of their lives) vary tremendously, and I’ve never seen a substantial discussion of how the “this is good for me, that is bad for me” sense works.
You might find The Fantasy of Being Thin interesting.
Yes, I am familiar with this particular community. They do discuss some common biases in an interesting way, but ultimately, my conclusion is that they generate their own more severe ones, without adding much clarity to anything overall.
What insights have you found in odd corners of the web?
Well, that could be a topic for a whole book, not a mere blog comment. I’d rather not just drop concrete names and places I’ve found interesting, since without lots of painstaking explanations and disclaimers, it would send off a thunderous signal of affiliation with all kinds of disreputable people.
NancyLebovitz:
I would say yes. I have a hobby of sorts that consists of exploring obscure corners of the web where various sorts of fringe people with unconventional (and often disreputable) ideas gather, and attempting to understand their perspectives in a detached manner, as free of bias as possible. As an example relevant for your question, I have read radical feminist websites where the level of anger against men far surpasses any venting against women you’ll see on even the worst PUA forums.
Now, my conclusion is that out of all these fringe groups, most of them just form their own echo chambers where they vent and reinforce their peculiar biases, but a small minority actually manage to come up with non-trivial accurate insight that is nowhere to be found in more reputable and mainstream sources. The PUA community just happens to be one such example. In contrast, I have never come across any analogous women’s community, where lots of valid and interesting insight would be offered alongside anti-male anger and venting, but if I hypothetically did, I have no doubt I would enjoy reading it. (There are also communities full of angry venting men where, in contrast to PUAs, I’ve never seen any particularly interesting ideas.)
Trouble is, some very strong biases are present here, because the ugly and hard to admit truth is that some personalty types of this sort are attractive as such to many women—not all women, of course, and I won’t speculate on the percentage, but it’s certainly non-negligible. Note that I don’t mean the situations where such dark characteristics are hidden under a nice surface only to emerge later, but when they are truly attractive by themselves, causing irresistible urges in women to engage in dangerous, self-immolating adventures with such men. You can view it as a specifically female form of extreme akrasia, I guess. The prevailing bias, however, is to interpret all such situations as women having been manipulated by a wolf in sheep’s clothing, even when the wolf was howling and brandishing his fangs from day one, only to get an enthusiastic response.
I would love to read material from a female analogue to PUA. Looking back on past relationships I can see some patterns for behavior that ‘hooked’ me, but I’m sure I’m missing a lot of potentially valuable insights.
People often meet a person they like but can’t commit to romantically because of small ‘defects’ in the person’s behavior as it relates to the relationship. Personally, I’d be all in favor of my significant other using PUA equivalent methods on me, provided I was aware it and had studied the material myself (in the same way that I’m in favor of my significant other wearing certain clothing, etc).
So, two main upshots of wide dissemination of PUA style material: better understanding of myself, and heightened attraction to my partner.
I replied to a similar question in this subthread.
You’re response in the subthread was more a list of biases exhibited by females (an interesting list though). What I’m looking for is a set of actionable techniques a woman can use in the context of a relationship to keep a man more interested.
The Rules is probably the best known example. I haven’t read it and don’t know whether there is any validity to the claims. I suspect there’s some truth in there but that it is not terribly rigorous or accurate.
I haven’t read this book either, but a significant piece of evidence against it is that one of the authors divorced her husband only a few years after it was published. Otherwise, I’ve seen it get mixed to negative comments on game websites, the principal complaint being that a man who lets himself be played by those rules may easily ipso facto signal low status to the point where he’ll destroy her respect for (and thus attraction to) him. Some of the tactics allegedly advocated by the book indeed sound that way, but I won’t pass any definite judgments since I haven’t read it.
Manslations is pretty good.
Certainly such products exist (e.g. catchhimandkeephim.com, husbandscantresist.com) but I’m not familiar with any free online resources comparable to the vast assortment available for men. Catchhimandkeephim.com has some articles, but skimming through I found it difficult to judge how useful a woman would find this advice, as it sounded all very obvious and straightforward to me… but then, I’m a man, and the articles are about how men react and think. It’s possible that the information would be a revelation for someone who wasn’t a man. ;-)
There are many books giving that sort of advice, but I haven’t read any, so I can’t recommend them. Just from the titles and blurbs I’ve seen, it can be reliably concluded that many are very bad.
Anecdotally, I can say that in the best discussions of women’s relationship strategies and techniques I’ve ever read on game-related sites, I’ve never seen anyone point out a book or any other source of systematic advice whose message closely matches the best evidence-supported conclusions of these discussions. I see this as a strong piece of evidence against the whole existing literature. This is not that surprising considering that the best evidence-supported conclusions sound, to a large degree, highly un-PC and shattering lots of pleasant-sounding illusions.
Another piece is that, to the extent that the challenge for women is getting commitment, it’s simply harder to do experiments.
Yes, it’s harder to do experiments on parts of the interaction that occur later down the line. I think that’s a lot of the reason that PUAs talk so much more about pickup than relationships (though PUA forums typically have active relationships boards): the conversion funnel of approaches to dating to relationships gets narrower and narrower. PUAs spend most of their time stuck at particular interaction points prior to relationships, such as getting numbers and women not calling them back, going on dates with women and not being able to kiss them, or only successfully attracting women who don’t quite meet their relationship criteria. I’ve noticed that once PUAs get all that stuff handled, they start talking about relationships more than the mechanics of pickup, and actually get really picky.
You might find The Fantasy of Being Thin interesting.
What insights have you found in odd corners of the web?
As for the Dark Triad, I don’t know what’s going on there. I tentatively assume that some people like danger, and what attracts some to motorcycles and mountain-climbing can also attract people to mates who have TROUBLE written all over them.
Alternatively, some women choose men like their fathers—they’re imprinted on a bad idea of what a man is.
Also, I hope it’s less common in the culture, but some women believe that they can turn a bad guy into a good one by being a sufficiently good wife. I’m not going to say it never happens, but making the attempt can be a powerful emotional hook.
It’s clear that how reliable people’s survival instincts are (and about what parts of their lives) vary tremendously, and I’ve never seen a substantial discussion of how the “this is good for me, that is bad for me” sense works.
Yes, I am familiar with this particular community. They do discuss some common biases in an interesting way, but ultimately, my conclusion is that they generate their own more severe ones, without adding much clarity to anything overall.
Well, that could be a topic for a whole book, not a mere blog comment. I’d rather not just drop concrete names and places I’ve found interesting, since without lots of painstaking explanations and disclaimers, it would send off a thunderous signal of affiliation with all kinds of disreputable people.